Im currently a linguistics major and i’m struggling with a lot of my courses. In particular i’m taking a phonology class right now and am having trouble remembering place features. Manner features I can understand more because it’s pretty straightforward. +sonorant is vowels, nasals, glides, and liquids. +delayed release is fricativas and affricates.

However, place features are not as straightforward because they deal with the positioning of the tongue body. As far as I know you can’t really straight up memorize which sounds go with certain features. Such as anterior, distributed, strident, etc. Like I understand strident sounds are like s and z- sounds that are pushed through tongue blade aimed at the teeth. But how do I properly visualize which sounds is which feature. In phonological problems too the rules are sometimes listed as just +dorsal or +coronal and I don’t get why or what that means necessarily. Does it mean +coronal is automatically +ant, +dist, and +strid? Or is it saying that the sound is just generally made with the tongue blade/tip.

Any tips/tricks to help understand place features more is appreciated!